10 Hashtags That Got 2015’s Life

Relatives of black women slain by police at #SayHerName rally in Union Square in New York City on May 20, 2015.Photo: Mia Fermindoza for the African American Policy Forum

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More than any other, 2015 has been the year of the racial justice hashtag. Some of these digital rallying cries came and went with the moment of highest relevance, while others stuck around and became living testaments to our collective action, resistance and humor. We compiled a crop of hashtags that captivated our feeds and imaginations this year. Here, in no particular order, are 10 of our favorites:

#QueridaKellyOsbourne

In early August, Ozzy’s and Sharon’s daughter tried to be an ally to Latino immigrants when she countered Donald Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric by asking who would clean his toilets if he deported then all from the United States. So Aura Bogado, then Colorlines’ news editor, launched #QueridaKellyOsbourne, a hashtag used primarily by Latinos tweeting candid stories about their families and criticisms of Osbourne:

#QueridaKellyOsbourne I am an undocumented immigrant who is currently working as a civil designer and studying to be an engineer.

The news of Bobby Jindal’s now-defunct campaign for the Republican presidential nomination angered many South Asian Americans who saw him disavow his Indian heritage when it was convenient and call hyphenated-American identity baseless. The acclaimed Indian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu started #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite to express that rage, and it thrived throughout Jindal’s mid-November departure from the race:

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush’s brilliant strategy to court Latino voters was to say that he’s referring to Asians when he talks about “anchor babies.” Jason Fong, a teen intern for AsAmNews, used #MyAsianAmericanStory to fight this modern-day Yellow Peril fear-mongering and celebrate the complexity of Asian America:

Social media lost it when Rachel Dolezal, then the president of the Spokane, Washington, branch of the NAACP, was outed as White by her parents. People of all stripes used #AskRachel to express their collective disbelief and general WTF-ness:

From Marilyn Manson allegedly portraying a Native American hitman to ongoing controversy surrounding the Washington NFL Team’s racist name (and all appropriation of Native imagery in between), #RedfaceDisgrace clapped back at the historic and ongoing erasure and systemic marginalization of Native peoples and cultures across the country:

No social media movement added more depth to #BlackLivesMatter than #SayHerName. The African American Policy Forum created the hashtag in support of its ongoing demand that Black women victims be included in the conversation about state violence against Black bodies. #SayHerName grew to encompass public outrage over Sandra Bland’s suspicious death in police custody and the multiple murders of trans women of color. The hashtag was in heavy rotation on May 21, a national day of action to highlight police brutality against Black women.

1 Comment

Great and very informative article!! I do have one small critique though. In your section on #ShoutYourAbortion, you included a tweet by someone who says they "support women if they were born men." I assume this tweet author is referring to trans women here. Well, I'm a trans woman, and while I may have been born with a penis, I definitely was NOT "born a man." I was just born a baby. . ."boy" and later "man" were words that other people chose to apply to me without my consent--words that had nothing to do with who I actually was. And the truth is this idea that trans women are born men is NOT supportive (or accurate) and is something most of us--including our top activists like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox--reject. In fact, it's rather prejudiced language and is part of the systemic pattern that leads to violence against trans women. So yeah--just a heads up!! I know Colorlines is usually pretty solid in relation to trans women and tries to do right by us, so I though it would be good to point this out so you don't use similar language in future articles.